Heads Roll at Beatport as SFX Trims the Fat

SFX has cleaned house at the recently-acquired Beatport, closing its San Francisco office and laying off a majority of the engineering team at its Denver office. These layoffs come on the heels of Beatport’s Q3 loss of $1 million, as well as SFX’s declining share price from $13 to $11.60 since its October IPO. Sources claim that SFX is focusing solely on Beatport Sound’s music store, with the teams of its other ventures—including Beatport DJs, Beatport Play, and Beatport Mixes—being on the receiving end of the fat trimming. Sources have put the total layoffs at around 20 from Denver—a majority of the engineering team—and the six engineers of the San Francisco office.

SFX confirmed these layoffs in a statement to TechCrunch, saying:

“With the additional resources provided by SFX, we are making significant new investments in Beatport and focusing on providing the best possible experience for our users – the DJ, the producer, the labels and the entire Electronic Music Culture community. To allow us to adapt and improve our service, it was necessary to make some organizational changes. We have closed our San Francisco office, reorganized our engineering team, and cut some positions in Denver. Beatport has always been about innovation and connection and these moves allow us to focus on that. With the recently announced acquisitions of PayLogic and Arc90, this refocus on maximizing Beatport as the definitive site for everything related to Electronic Music is indicative of our commitment to igniting the simmering Revolution of this astounding movement, Electronic Music Culture. We look forward to unveiling a number of exciting new technology initiatives in 2014.”

Going forward, SFX will focus more on ticketing and events, which includes its ownership of concert promoters Made Event and Disco Donnie Presents. Beatport’s laid-off workers received “significant severance packages,” especially for long-time employees, some of which had been working for the company since its launch in 2003.